When I think of the word morpheme, I think of the word form. Morphological awareness is being aware of the smallest units that help form a word. Phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and morphological awareness are pieces to the literacy puzzle. For our children and students, we always want to make sure we set a solid foundation so they can be successful.
Every child needs to have a strong morphological awareness so that they can understand what a word means and deepen their comprehension. As it grows, their understanding also helps them become proficient spellers and readers.
You may be wondering how this helps with reading and spelling.
Around 55% of the words that we use in the English language are formed from Latin roots. That's just Latin roots!
When researchers performed a study on the predictors of children's reading and spelling success, one significant indicator was their strength with morphological awareness.
Morpheme Sort
You can do this by writing different types of morphemes on notecards and separating them into the categories of prefixes, suffixes, root words, bound roots and adding in latin and greek roots too.
Instead of introducing all the categories, you can introduce a few from each category, one at a time. The key is always going over the meaning and building words with them as you introduce them.
Change the Word
For this activity, you can build a root word and then add a suffix and a prefix to it. Then, ask your student to change the word to mean something new. You can do this with notecards in a pocket chart or whiteboard.
The hardest part is making sure your students create a real word instead of a nonsense word.
Name that Rule
This one works well if your child is already in an appropriate reading intervention program that utilizes spelling rules.
As your child or student moves through these programs, find the rules applied to the base word when adding a suffix. There are a handful of rules that go with these suffixes. At times, this can be overwhelming, but practice and repetition will help them retain these rules.
You can build a root, Latin, or Greek word, and then, before adding a suffix, ask them what rule they would use and why. The why is always necessary to ensure that they understand and aren't just guessing.
Quick tip: It usually helps them see the original word to know which rule will be used. So, build the original word and then make the new word with prefixes and suffixes next to it.
If you would like more ideas on how to apply and grow your child's or students' morphological awareness, please email me at [email protected].